VITA Waldo Peirce Brief life of a vibrant artist: 1884-1970 by william gallagher

aldo peirce ’07/’08/’09 almost didn’t graduate from word pictures. Their six-foot frames and beards were as impres- Harvard. By his own admission he spent too much time sive as their artistic talents. (Peirce was occasionally referred to as in Leavitt and Peirce (no relation) playing pool. He the “Hemingway of American painting,” but said once that made recordedW his poolroom days in a comical poem that can still be as much sense as “calling Hemingway ‘the Peirce of American lit- found in that venerable tobacco shop on Mass. Ave. erature.’”) Both men shared a formidable gusto for life and adven- Peirce did find time to earn his letter as a center on the football ture—each married four times—and possessed an unending, con- team and attend the classes of his favorite teacher, Charles suming curiosity about the world around them. Fishing was their Townsend Copeland. Once o≠ probation, he earned his degree in passion, and several times Peirce joined Hemingway in the Dry 1909; in 1910 he hopped a cattle boat, bound for England, with Tortugas and the Marquesas Keys. Never without a sketchbook, John Reed ’10, the future revolutionary. But Peirce changed his he captured these expeditions in oils and watercolors. When mind about the shipboard accommodations; he jumped from the Hemingway’s face graced the cover of Time in 1937—he had just vessel as it was leaving Boston harbor and swam ashore—an act published To Have and Have Not—the magazine used a Peirce por- that became a constant topic, with changing details, in inter- trait of his friend holding a fishing pole, eyes focused on the line. views over the years. He then booked passage on another ship The two can also be found together in other Peirce paintings— and reached England just in time to appear in court and save fighting bulls in Pamplona, drinking in Sloppy Joe’s in Key West, Reed from being charged with his murder. catching tarpon in the Gulf Stream. After considering the options open to the son of a lumber baron A prolific painter, Peirce had early successes in his career with from Bangor, Maine, Peirce eventually settled on painting. He one-man shows all over the country; his canvases are found in studied in Spain with Ignacio Zuloaga and in France at the leading museums and in many private collections. (He enjoyed Académie Julian: scores of letters to his mother describe the often giving away paintings to friends and acquaintances.) In collective riotous times of an art student in prewar Paris. He launched a ca- recognition of his talent, the College class of 1907, which Peirce reer as a modest yet successful Impressionist; by 1915 an exhibi- claimed as his own, purchased a painting of Harvard Yard fes- tion in New York City was displaying his work alongside that of tooned for the 1936 Tercentenary and donated it to the Univer- George Bellows, John Sloan, and Edward Hopper. sity. He had returned to Maine in the 1930s; in later years, his col- But in 1915 he also volunteered for the American Field Service orful life was a bit restrained by more focus on his family, and his ambulance corps. Though he escaped the front occasionally for works reflected a Regionalistic influence. Some critics judge that weekends in his Paris apartment, most of the time he was sur- his talent waned, yet the vigor and the color of his scenes of the rounded by battlefield horrors; he was awarded the Croix de Maine countryside—its people, flowers, and animals—and his Guerre for conspicuous bravery at Verdun. Peirce was often many portraits, still give joy to those who see them. viewed as a Rabelaisian character lacking in sensitivity, but one Maxwell Perkins ’07, Hemingway’s editor at Scribner’s, en- has only to read his contributions to the memorial volume Friends couraged Peirce to write his autobiography and once advanced of France to realize the depth of his concern, caring, and empathy him $500 for the project. The work was never completed, but a for his stricken friends and fallen soldiers. Certain passages can vivid sense of the man can be found in his voluminous, often vig- easily compare with those found in A Farewell to Arms. orously illustrated, correspondence with family members, bud- Living and painting in Paris o≠ and on in the 1920s, Peirce be- dies, and notable personalities. Time and time again one finds came friends with many of the notables who defined this period in “great” being used to describe him. Hemingway once asked his the arts: Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Sylvia Beach, Bernice Ab- young son Jack, “Who is the greatest man you know?”—expect- bott, Archibald MacLeish, LL.B. ’19, John Dos Passos ’16—and ing to hear “Papa.” Jack quickly responded, “It’s Waldo.” Ernest Hemingway, another wartime ambulance driver. He and Hemingway stayed friends for life, a relationship not sustained by William Gallagher, M.D. ’60, a Hemingway Society member living in Bangor, many other Hemingway associates from the Paris days; their let- Maine, is writing a study of the intertwining lives of Peirce and Hemingway. ters to each other were filled with news, gossip, and witty pas- sages, often interlaced with Spanish and French asides. Both men Opposite: Peirce by Peirce, a self-portrait painted in 1924. Above: Peirce and were voracious readers. Both were remarkable presences in a Hemingway show o≠ their catch in a detail from a 1928 photograph that they room, regaling others with ribald tales, great stories, and vivid sent to their friend, the publisher Sylvia Beach.

34 January - February 2002

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For copyright and reprint information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at www.harvardmagazine.com 1924 (OIL ON CANVAS, 25.5X22) PORTLAND MUSEUM OF ART, MAINE. GIFT WILLIAM D. HAMILL, 1993.25.1 SELF PORTRAIT, WALDO PEIRCE (UNITED STATES, 1884-1970)

Portrait courtesy of the Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine. Harvard Magazine 35 Photograph courtesy of Princeton University Library Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For copyright and reprint information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at www.harvardmagazine.com